Book picks similar to
William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination by Oliver Harris
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Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions, Vol 1
Frank Harris - 2001
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War
David Lebedoff - 2008
One was a celebrity at twenty-three, the other virtually unknown until his dying days. One was right-wing and religious, the other a socialist and an atheist. Yet, as this ingenious and important new book reveals, at the heart of their lives and writing, Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell were essentially the same man. Orwell is best known for Animal Farm and 1984, Waugh for Brideshead Revisited and comic novels like Scoop and Vile Bodies. However different they may seem, these two towering figures of twentieth-century literature are linked for the first time in this engaging and unconventional biography, which goes beyond the story of their amazing lives to reach the core of their beliefs–a shared vision that was startlingly prescient about our own troubled times.Both Waugh and Orwell were born in 1903, into the same comfortable stratum of England’s class-obsessed society. But at first glance they seem to have lived opposite lives. Waugh married into the high aristocracy, writing hilarious novels that captured the amoral time between the wars. He converted to Catholicism after his wife’s infidelity and their divorce. Orwell married a moneyless student of Tolkien’s who followed him to Barcelona, where he fought in the Spanish Civil War. She saved his life there–twice–but her own fate was tragic.Waugh and Orwell would meet only once, as the latter lay dying of tuberculosis, yet as The Same Man brilliantly shows, in their life and work both writers rebelled against a modern world run by a privileged, sometimes brutal, few. Orwell and Waugh were almost alone among their peers in seeing what the future–our time–would bring, and they dedicated their lives to warning us against what was coming: a world of material wealth but few values, an existence without tradition or community or common purpose, where lives are measured in dollars, not sense. They explained why, despite prosperity, so many people feel that our society is headed in the wrong direction. David Lebedoff believes that we need both Orwell and Waugh now more than ever.Unique in its insights and filled with vivid scenes of these two fascinating men and their tumultuous times, The Same Man is an amazing story and an original work of literary biography.
Monkee Business: The Revolutionary Made-For-TV Band
Eric Lefcowitz - 2013
Everything but control over their careers. Author Eric Lefcowitz chronicles the kaleidoscopic journey of Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, following each of the four Monkees, together and apart, from 1965 to the present day. A must-read for music fans, “Monkee Business" is the definitive biography of a rock and roll legend.
Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts
Gare B. Joyce - 2007
Joyce's year on the hockey beat is a steep learning curve for him; NHL scouts spend each season gathering information on players fighting it out to break into the world of professional hockey. They watch hundreds of games, speak to scores of players, parents, team-mates and other scouts, amassing profiles on all the top contenders. It's a form of risk assessment—is this young hopeful deserving of a multi-million dollar contract?—and it can be a tough and thankless task. Scouts are ground into the game, picking up nuances of play that even the most committed fan would miss, but they are looking at more than just how well a kid can play. And come the final draft, only a tiny percentage of their full year's work might matter.Examining the amount of information gathered on the under-eighteen hopefuls, the scrutiny to which they are subjected, and the differences between the rigour of American and Canadian junior teams, Joyce opens a window on the life and methods of an NHL scout and penetrates the mysterious world of scouting as no one has before.
Born to Ride: The Autobiography of Stephen Roche
Stephen Roche - 2012
Victory at the World Cycling Championship in Austria completed a near-unprecedented ‘triple crown’ that included triumphs in the same year at the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia. In April, against all odds, he fought his own team and an angry, partisan Italian crowd who spat at him on his way to taking the Giro. In July a superhuman effort at La Plagne saw him secure the yellow jersey just before he blacked out. Roche’s victory in Austria confirmed his virtuosity.Born to Ride, Stephen Roche’s first full autobiography, uses his best year as the starting point to explore the rest of his life. He doesn’t hold back as he examines the many ups and downs of his time on and off the bike, scrutinising victories, defeats, rivals, serious injury, doping allegations and agonizing family breakdown. At the heart of the book lies an enigma. For all his charm and rare, natural talent, beneath the surface lies an incredible tenacity and determination. Roche finally reveals himself as a smiling assassin; a master-strategist who lives to attack.
Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command
Kent Masterson Brown - 2021
Meade guided his forces to victory in the Civil War's most pivotal battle. Commentators often dismiss Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. But in this long-anticipated book, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg. Using Meade's published and unpublished papers alongside diaries, letters, and memoirs of fellow officers and enlisted men, Brown highlights how Meade's rapid advance of the army to Gettysburg on July 1, his tactical control and coordination of the army in the desperate fighting on July 2, and his determination to hold his positions on July 3 insured victory.Brown argues that supply deficiencies, brought about by the army's unexpected need to advance to Gettysburg, were crippling. In spite of that, Meade pursued Lee's retreating army rapidly, and his decision not to blindly attack Lee's formidable defenses near Williamsport on July 13 was entirely correct in spite of subsequent harsh criticism. Combining compelling narrative with incisive analysis, this finely rendered work of military history deepens our understanding of the Army of the Potomac as well as the machinations of the Gettysburg Campaign, restoring Meade to his rightful place in the Gettysburg narrative.
Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney
Marion Meade - 2010
He is famous for two masterpieces, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939). Seventy years later, The Day of the Locust remains the most penetrating novel ever written about Hollywood. EILEEN MCKENNEY—accidental muse, literary heroine—was the inspiration for her sister Ruth’s humorous stories, My Sister Eileen, which led to stage, film, and television adaptations, including Leonard Bernstein’s 1953 musical Wonderful Town. She grew up in Cleveland and moved to Manhattan at 21 in search of romance and adventure. She and her sister lived in a basement apartment in the Village with a street-level window into which men frequently peered. Husband and wife were intimate with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Katharine White, S.J. Perelman, Bennett Cerf, and many of the literary, theatrical, and movie notables of their era. With Lonelyhearts, biographer Marion Meade, whose Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin earned accolades from the Washington Post Book World ("Wonderful") to the San Francisco Chronicle ("Like looking at a photo album while listening to a witty insider reminisce about the images"), restores West and McKenney to their rightful places in the rich cultural tapestry of interwar America.
Crowded House: Something So Strong
Chris Bourke - 1997
When "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong" exploded in the US charts, worldwide success looked inevitable. Critics compared them musically to the Beatles and fans adored them for their warmth and humour on stage. Four brilliant albums later, their roller-coaster ride of achievements and disappointments came to an end on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, in front of one of the largest audiences in Australian history. The dream was over, the band broken up, their enormous promise only partly fulfilled. In this definitive account, New Zealand journalist Chris Bourke has written the true story of Crowded House. With unparalleled access to all band members, their families, friends, musical collaborators, managers, and record company personanel, he has captured their essence. It is a unique tale of musical chemistry, family bonds and the personal costs of pursuing an artistic vision. From the manic energy of the recording studio to the machinations of the record industry, this riveting account is a book for every Crowded House fan.
Old Maine Woman: Stories from the Coast to the County
Glenna Johnson Smith - 2010
The book also includes some of her best fiction pieces.
Raymond Chandler: A Biography
Tom Hiney - 1997
Using recently uncovered archival materials including personal papers and correspondence, biographer Thomas Hiney vividly evokes Chandler's early years in Nebraska, his education in England and on the corrupt streets of Los Angeles, and his later years as a novelist and screenwriter in the heyday of the Hollywood studio system. Along the way, he provides illuminating insights into the writer's inspirations and work - as well as accounts of Chandler's battles with alcohol addiction and his friendships with Howard Hawks, "Lucky" Luciano, S. J. Perelman, and Alfred Hitchcock. This book is also the first to fully detail the significance and complexities of his thirty-year marriage to Cissy, a woman seventeen years his senior. Raymond Chandler is personal portrait of an author as extraordinary as the fiction he created - a body of work that has sold more than five million copies, been translated into twenty-five languages, and inspired countless imitators. "A discerning portrait of the creator of Philip Marlowe, the archetypal American private eye." - Newsweek
Life on Two Legs
Norman J. Sheffield - 2013
For the next 15 years, Trident Studios, was at the epicentre of the music industry, recording some of the era's greatest artists, from The Beatles and David Bowie to Elton John and Genesis. Trident also developed their own talent, including a raw and demanding four-piece band called Queen. After an acrimonious split with Trident, their volatile leader Freddie Mercury famously dedicated a song to Norman: Death On Two Legs. In Life On Two Legs, this legendary music figure breaks his forty year silence and sets the record straight, not just about Freddie and Queen but also about artists from John Lennon and Marc Bolan to Harry Nilsson and Phil Collins and the recording of such classics as Hey Jude by The Beatles and Space Oddity by David Bowie. Funny, fascinating and occasionally irreverent - and with a foreword by Sir Paul McCartney - this is an unmissable memoir that brings to vivid life some of rock's greatest characters as well as the era and the studio that produced some of its classic music.
The Photographer at Sixteen: The Death and Life of a Fighter
George Szirtes - 2019
It is fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes
A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, and through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey.
In July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her way to hospital after attempting to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of what came before, to re-construct who Magda Szirtes really was. The Photographer at Sixteen moves from her death, spooling backwards through her years as a mother, through sickness and exile in England, the family's flight from Hungary in 1956, her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer and her vanished family in Transylvania.The woman who emerges, fleetingly, fragmentarily - with her absolutism, her contradictions, her beauty - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteen reveals a life that is at Magda Szirtes from the depths of the end to the comparable safety of the photographer's studio where she first appears as a small child. It is a book born of curiosity, guilt and love.
Heart and Steel
Bill Cowher - 2021
Now, for the first time, Cowher will shine a light on a life filled with success, achieved through will and resilience in situations which, often times, appeared to be hopeless.In Heart and Steel, Cowher will take you on his journey from childhood to the undersized, mohawked, disco-dancing North Carolina State linebacker, to fighting for a spot as a "bubble player" with the Browns and Eagles, before injuries ended his playing career. Bill will discuss how that same drive led to his big coaching break, running Special Teams for Marty Schottenheimer and the Cleveland Browns at just twenty-seven-years-old, before taking over the Pittsburgh Steelers just seven years later. Cowher will reveal exclusive, never-before-told anecdotes and candid thoughts on the biggest games, players, and moments that defined his fifteen-year Steelers tenure.But this is more than a "football story."In 2010, Bill lost his beloved wife, Kaye, and father, Laird, within three months of one another. It forced him, yet again, to summon that resiliency to unearth a stronger version of himself—not only so he could march on, but to add a deeper level to the loving, supportive father his three daughters had always known.Cowher's learned many lessons in his life; as a father, grandfather, husband, coach, and broadcaster. He will show you how you can continue to grow by embracing transition, personally and professionally, through renewed perspective and social consciousness."Billy from Crafton" has come a long way. Through love and conviction, Cowher's achieved more than he ever could have dreamed of. You can, too, with the same heart and steel.
Permanently Suspended: The Rise and Fall... and Rise Again of Radio's Most Notorious Shock Jock
Anthony Cumia - 2018
A must-read for all diehard O&A fans, Permanently Suspended finally answers the questions that everyone has been waiting for: What really happened between Opie and Anthony? What was the reasoning behind the multiple firings? What prompted the tweeting about the Times Square NYC incident? What is the true account of the controversial allegations? What are the never-before-revealed details of Anthony’s stint in rehab? What does the future hold for his livestream podcast? These questions, and many more, will be answered. Permanently Suspended is a humorous, no-holds-barred account of the legendary career and life of Anthony Cumia—a blue collar guy who made his dreams come true, rising above all obstacles to become one of the most well-known and successful personalities in radio history.